


Qymaen

by Inonibird



Series: Sahuldeem [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Huk, Kaleesh (Star Wars), Minor Character Death, Planet Kalee (Star Wars), Trauma, Violence, Yam'rii
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inonibird/pseuds/Inonibird
Summary: All stories must begin somewhere.This one begins with a boy and his slugthrower, lying in the grass under a hot sun, holding his breath as he aims at a wooden target a hundred meters away.(Part One of Sahuldeem, a six-part exploration of Grievous' backstory)
Series: Sahuldeem [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086662
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my 2020 project and my first ever Star Wars fic! The entirety of the story was scripted out during the first half of the year, and I spent the second half adapting enough of it into prose to begin posting here. I can't believe I kicked off this journey almost a year ago, and I hope others who find Grievous/Qymaen jai Sheelal as fascinating as I do will enjoy what I've wrought. 
> 
> A few things to bear in mind:
> 
> -This is a full exploration of Grievous' backstory, and my attempt at Canon/Legends reconciliation. You may find I have a slight bias. :’)  
> -There’s a lot we don’t know about the Kaleesh (or Qymaen) and it was an adventure filling in the gaps. Do I also take a few liberties with what we DO know? Sure! What’s a fic without some liberties? But I do try to color inside the lines.  
> -I decided to borrow Sumerian for most of the Kaleesh language, with occasional, semi-arbitrary alterations and a sprinkling of Czech-inspired words. I’ve gone down the long, exhausting road of conlangs before, and I didn’t have the energy to do it again, sorry!  
> -I am by no means a SW expert or veteran fan; I’ve had to do a lot of research! Apologies in advance for any errors or discrepancies regarding the SW universe (expanded or otherwise).  
> -This is a six-part story, with some parts considerably longer than others. (I'm looking at you, Part Two)
> 
> Thanks for reading! You can find more content (i.e. story art) over on my [Tumblr](https://inonibird.tumblr.com/).

57 BBY

Year Five of Yam’rii Occupation

Qymaen jai Sheelal was eight years old when his father taught him how to shoot a slugthrower.

Too young, many would argue, even for Kaleesh. Tradition dictated youth be granted their first weapon after twelve years, no earlier. For Qymaen to receive his great-elder-mother’s Czerka Outland rifle before all of his tusks had fully grown in was unprecedented.

But the Huk had been unprecedented, and tradition, necessarily, flouted.

The weather was hot and dry that morning, as it often was in their particular corner of the Ausez Steppes. The sun sat low in the cloudless sky, but its intensity was still such that it left father and son overwarm and uncomfortable as they stretched belly-down with no cover to speak of in a field outside of Irikuum. A gentle breeze offered reprieve, sending the grasses around them into rippling motion, like Kalee’s driest ocean. Qymaen’s father bit back an oath on reflex. They were downwind; normally a breeze such as that thwarted a hunt in a hurry.

But in this instance, their quarry was not juleem or pakozri. Instead, a hundred meters away, a round wooden target lay against the shell of an abandoned wagon missing half its wheels. Sun-faded pigment painted rings on the target’s surface, and neatly centered holes from old slugs boasted the talents of marksmen past.

A loud BANG cracked the stale air. Several tumu took wing in squawking protest, scolding the two Kaleesh sprawled below.

Qymaen lowered his rifle, shoulders sagging. “I missed _again_.”

His father peered over. “Why do you think you missed?”

“I don’t know.” Qymaen slumped deeper into the grass, willing himself to sink out of sight of his father’s assured disappointment. His father, the best shot in Irikuum. “I’m just bad at it.”

Kishar jai Immartu may have been the best rifleman in their village, but he had achieved his status through immense patience—and such patience extended to his attitude in all facets of life, including training. “You can’t know that yet,” he told Qymaen. “You’ve only just begun learning. Now,” he added, offering his son a playful bump with his elbow, “if you had been shooting for over twenty years and missed a shot like that, _then_ I’d say you were bad at it.”

Qymaen received the elbow with an unhappy grunt.

Kishar sobered. “Let me help you see what you’re doing wrong. Try again.”

He watched as Qymaen reluctantly lifted the old rifle and aligned its scope with one squinting eye. Kishar tried to focus past how small Qymaen’s hands were—too small, too young—tiny russet fingers supporting the weapon’s weight at the forestock, tightening around the trigger, tense with nerves and with the overzealous gulp of air Qymaen sucked into his lungs and—

BANG.

Another miss.

“You’re holding your breath,” Kishar said.

Qymaen flung his rifle to the ground, all too aware of the tantrum it resembled, and too late to stop himself. “I _have_ to! Everything gets all shaky when I breathe!”

Kishar squeezed his son’s nearest shoulder. “Your instincts are right; you shouldn’t be breathing when you shoot. But what you’re doing is taking the air into your lungs and holding it there. That creates tension, and tension is as much an enemy to a marksman as the Huk.” He spat the word as if the taste of it offended him, but quickly shook off his ill feelings and focused on setting an example for his son. “You must _relax_. Release the air, and shoot when it’s gone and no longer on your mind. Like this.”

He demonstrated with his own Outland rifle, exhaling before his clawed finger pressured the trigger. The slug buried itself dead center in the target.

Qymaen gaped. Never had he witnessed his father’s skills in action so clearly. Only once before, in the dark of the night, when he had crept aboveground to see the village warriors fight off the invaders during one of their awful raids. A brief, wistful prayer to the ancestors flitted through his mind, a plea for even a shred of his father’s mastery. _Just enough to hit the stupid target_ , he clarified. _Let me show him I can help fight the Huk_.

“Now you,” said Kishar.

Qymaen settled in the grass, sighting the target through the scope. The reticle shivered as he drew a deep breath, distracting, nerve-ruinous. He closed his eyes, breathing out his self-sabotaging tension, his anxiety that he would fail his father, his fear that he would not be able to protect himself when the Huk came to steal him away, too—and released everything in a smooth wave. Even his finger felt like liquid as it rolled over the trigger. He opened his eyes in time to see splinters of wood erupt outward as his slug clipped the edge of the distant target and slammed into the side of the cart.

Kishar smiled.

Qymaen, however, was determined to do better. He ran through the motions once more—aim, inhale, exhale, relax, fire—and grinned in satisfaction when the slug burrowed into the second innermost ring of the target, a finger’s-length from his father’s shot. He started to beam up at his father, then hastily squashed his childish excitement. His _father_ hadn’t been grinning like a fool when he hit the center of the target. He settled for trying to appear unmoved, yet confident.

Kishar bit back a laugh as his son’s expression went through a journey equivalent to a pilgrimage to Shrupak. He didn’t want to diminish the moment. “ _Very_ good,” he said, placing a hand on Qymaen’s head and fondly tousling his locked hair where it was tied at the base of his skull. “See? Not so bad, after all. You might even have a talent for this.”

Qymaen batted his father’s hand away with a good-natured flail. “I want to keep practicing.”

“Mm, I think that’s enough for today, little Sheelal. You’ll tire yourself out if you do this too often.”

“But I’m just lying here,” Qymaen protested.

“Not anymore, you aren’t.” Kishar pushed himself to his feet, scooping his son into his muscular arms with ease as he stood. Kishar brandished the scrawny boy as if offering him up to the ancestors—Qymaen squirmed and shouted his righteous indignation—before tossing him harmlessly aside. “Go see what your friends are up to.”

It wasn’t the most graceful of landings, but, after a quick dusting of his tunic and breeches and a rather offended glance tossed over his shoulder, Qymaen scrambled toward the village. 

Kishar watched him go, his smile fading. 

They preferred to take women and children, cruel and painstaking in their selection of slaves, choosing those too weak and too young to fight. The men they would also take, given the opportunity, but many men—warriors or not—fought back, and those who fought back were butchered. And then there were the rumors, the unspeakable whispers trickling on the winds that blew from the Huk colonies on Kalee—winds thick with the stink of atrocities Kishar could not think of without revulsion crawling its way from his queasy stomach up his throat. No father should have to consider what fate he preferred befall his own son, and yet, as Kishar stooped to gather the rifles, he knew his preference had already, irrevocably guided his actions. He had decided to teach his son how to shoot. Now, Qymaen could fight back. 

Now, Qymaen could die.

 _Better to die free_ , Kishar thought, swallowing the heartsick lump that formed in his throat. But no. He was alone now, with no Qymaen to worry over his vulnerable spill of tears. He let them flow, relishing the momentary privacy of his sorrow—remembering that night—remembering Shahulla.

He wondered if he would mourn her less had she been killed.

His tears dried quickly in the dry heat, gone by the time he trudged his way past the low outer wall and into Irikuum. The rare, precious sound of children laughing drifted through the village streets, comfortingly near. Nothing was ever distant in Irikuum, a clutch of clay and cloth huts huddled in their valley like eggs in a nest, the last bastion of civilization before the grasses of the Ausez Steppes languished and gave way to the hostile desert lands. Family was never far. Kishar was certain he could hear his son’s voice carrying over the indistinct clamor from the other children, demanding their attention. It was enough to make him smile.

“It’s early, Kishar. Out shooting?”

Kishar looked over, startled, to find his cousin leaning out the window of his hut, the opening scarcely big enough to house his burly frame. _Not that early_ , he thought, noting the continued, muted commotion of whatever play the children were engaged in. He suspected Xansis knew exactly what he had been up to, standing there in his partial hunting leathers, his limbs wrapped for protection, dulhlava shielding his scalp from the sun’s ire, toting not one, but two rifles. He explained anyway. “Good morning, Xansis. Teaching Qymaen how to handle himself.”

Xansis jai Sumur sighed, crestfallen, and immediately gave voice to Kishar’s misgivings. “He’s so young.”

“Not much younger than Zaebar was when you taught him how to use a Lig sword,” said Kishar, clinging to the rationalization.

Xansis grunted his agreement, though his yellow eyes continued to reflect the painful regret of every parent in the village. “I wish we could let our children be children for a little longer.”

Strange to find himself speaking in defense of what made him feel so wretched. Kishar met his cousin’s sad eyes and spoke firmly. “The Huk have denied us that luxury. Our children must learn how to protect themselves.”

“I know. I know this. I only…I wish…”

“So do I.”

The cousins stood together another minute or two, ears tilted to the wind, listening to their children.

A few streets away, the children engaged in the sort of disorganized play peculiar to a group of younglings absent an authority figure to guide them in a structured game, or to prevent them from making self-injurious decisions. The eldest children in the group tossed a juleem-hide ball back and forth, ignoring a younger boy as he stood in the middle of their game, whining and stretching to intercept the ball. Two others alternated between drawing in the dirt with sticks, and whacking each other with said sticks when their differences couldn’t be resolved through art. The rest of the children clambered around on the nearest huts and walls, some more successfully than others. Qymaen himself straddled the apex of the tallest structure at their disposal, the archway that framed the village’s southern entrance, the direction from which Irikuum most saw travelers and traders. 

Qymaen scanned the horizon, wishing he still had his great-elder-mother’s rifle. Far became near when he looked through the scope; untouchable became touchable with a squeeze of his finger. It was like tricking time and space. It was a trick he sorely wanted to show the Huk.

“See any Huk sneaking up on us?” one of the other children called up from the base of the arch.

“No,” replied Qymaen. “But they don’t sneak. They come from the sky.”

“What if they sneak up on us from the _sky?_ ” wondered another.

One of the older children tossed the ball up and down and snorted. “That’s stupid. They can’t do that. The sky’s _right there_. We’d see them.”

Qymaen sighed and lifted his voice importantly. “I told you, they don’t _sneak_. They don’t have to. They got better weapons than us, so why would they? It’s our slugthrowers against their blasters. They just show up and attack.” He leaned over the arch, seeking his cousin. “Right, Zaebar?”

Zaebar jai Statziga looked much like his father, orange as sandstone and with a heavy brow that gave him an air of permanent pessimism. The eldest of the children present, he stood straight and a head taller than the rest as he caught the ball and glanced up at Qymaen. “He’s right. You all have to hide in the cellars when the Huk raiders show up. _I’ve_ seen what happens aboveground.”

“I know what happens during raids,” said Qymaen, not to be outdone. “They have nets that zap you like lightning so you can’t _move_.”

Zaebar rolled his eyes. “They’re called electro nets.”

But all ears turned to Qymaen, more nervous and impressed by his turn of phrase than by Zaebar’s technical truths.

“Lightning?”

“They sound scary.”

“They _should_ sound scary,” stressed Qymaen, his landing kicking up a perimeter of dust as he dropped into their midst. He spoke earnestly and with animated gestures, not trying to be cruel, but enjoying the attention. “They wrap you up and drag you away so no one will ever see you again. If you’re old enough, the Huk make you into their slaves. If you’re too little...” He paused for effect, then put his hands up to his mouth, intimating a much larger set of jaws than his own that clamped shut, his netted claws forming its sharp teeth.

While most of the children had gathered around Qymaen to listen, Zaebar stood away from the group, mouth twisted in annoyance. His eyes flicked from his cousin’s posturing to the tearful expressions on the other young faces, and finally he cut in, challenging, “ _You’re_ not supposed to be up here during raids, Qymaen. So when did you even see an electro net? When they took your mother away?”

A shocked hush fell over the group. Both Qymaen and Zaebar looked stricken: Qymaen as if he’d been slapped in the face, Zaebar wishing he’d swallowed his tongue instead of blurting what he had.

Qymaen couldn’t find his breath to respond. As unbidden memories swarmed his senses—frantic hands gripping his upper arms and shoving him into the darkness of an alcove, the cacophonous chitter from horrible mandibles, the spitting, flame-bright sizzle of electro nets, the wail rising above it all—he realized he didn’t _want_ to respond.

“Qy, wait—” Zaebar began, clutching the ball to his chest, ears pinned back in distress.

But Qymaen was already running, his head ducked to hide his tears. 

He didn’t stop until he reached his family’s hut, hide and cloth panels decorated with clan-specific designs to distinguish it from the others, Jai Clan sigil painted with red-bold prominence above the front door frame. He burst through that door, ready to barge his way through the main circular chamber to the hanging cloth that separated the living space from their sleeping quarters, the Jai Clan sigil also stitched into its surface. His pace stuttered at the sight of his father, seated at the workbench with his back to the door, wiping down his rifle with a square of cloth. Too late to downplay his dramatic entrance. His father started and twisted on his stool to face the door, eyes darting up and down as he inspected his son for harm. They lingered on Qymaen’s face. Qymaen gave his cheeks a self-conscious swipe of his wrist, hoping the wetness wasn’t too noticeable.

Kishar nodded toward Qymaen’s rifle, propped against the side of the workbench. “Do you want to help me clean these?”

Maybe a distraction would be better than hiding under his covers, trying to smother the lingering impressions of chittering Huk and buzzing electro nets. “Yeah.”

He crossed the room, stepping carefully around the central hearth and the cushions that served as seating for family during meals and for entertaining guests. It was too early in the day to light the fire, and the curtains were drawn to preserve the relative morning cool of their home, but small lamps situated around the room provided plenty of light to go about their chores. Even without the lamps, Qymaen knew he could still see well enough to navigate the hut as well as a musnaka hunting in a burrow, but his father had explained that even Kaleesh eyes could grow tired and weak with too little light. Indeed, Kishar turned up the nearest lamp when Qymaen dragged the second stool beside him and picked up his rifle.

Kishar studied his son, who began to disassemble his weapon as he’d been taught, but his attention trained on his still-damp cheekbones. “What upset you?” he asked after a moment. “One of the children?”

“It’s nothing,” said Qymaen quietly, and despite the obvious lie, Kishar didn’t push him for more.

They worked together in silence for another minute. Soon, Kishar moved the cleaning jar closer to the edge of the table, and, soaking a fresh rag in the clear liquid, Qymaen tended to every metal surface of his weapon with a delicacy he rarely otherwise possessed. Everything about the old slugthrower encouraged him to settle the fire in his soul by necessity— _don’t breathe, don’t shake, don’t grip too hard, be precise, be vigilant, think before you shoot_ —and it bled into his careful ministrations.

“You’re doing very well,” Kishar said at length, unable to contain his pride. “Your great-elder-mother’s rifle will last for many more years to come, under your care.”

Qymaen spoke without looking up. “If we go to the Huk colonies and fight them there, do you think we can rescue Mother?”

Kishar dropped his disassembled scope. It bounced off his thigh and clattered to the ground, forgotten, as he stared blankly down at his son. “What?”

“She’s not dead. They have her. We can save her if we attack them, like—like the freedom fighters in Urukishnugal.”

“It’s not that simple, little Sheelal,” said Kishar, grasping for rational words and a calm demeanor. “We have to protect Irikuum.”

Qymaen’s hands twisted around the barrel of his rifle. “You mean we have to keep hiding. Like children in the cellar.”

Kishar didn’t miss his son’s frustration. His own tone sharpened as he set his rifle down on the workbench with a _clunk_. “No, Qymaen, we are _surviving_. Listen to me. Do you know the village of Ganaugaa?”

“No…”

“Because it was _gutted_ by the Huk. _Everyone_ who once lived there has been killed or enslaved.” Kishar’s breath grew quick as his pulse rose and blood ran hot. He could already see the dread in his son’s eyes, but he pressed on, fueled by his desperation to impart this vital lesson. “It is an empty _shell_ , silent of souls, shunned by the gods, and it is because its people didn’t prepare themselves. _We_ are prepared, we will stand our ground, and we will _not_ abandon Irikuum to the same fate by running off on wild, _useless_ missions that risk what few warriors we have left. Do you understand me?”

Qymaen’s expression crumpled as he tried and failed to contain his tears for the second time that morning. “I...I just miss her.”

His father’s heart was still thudding as Qymaen was pulled into a hug tight with regret. Powerful pheromones flooded their nostrils, washing one another in the scent of their shared heartache. Under other circumstances, their kuu-lir should have brought comfort. Now, it only served to remind them that a third scent was missing from their home, never to be restored.

“So do I,” Kishar managed to say before grief choked him.

—

The raiders came again, two months after that day.

Evening deepened to black night, but the streets of Irikuum were awash with red blaster fire and the blue-white crackle of electro nets and shock grenades. In the flashes of light, blades clashed, the metal of Kaleesh Lig swords crossing the organic chitin of serrated Huk forearms. 

Below the fight, where dirt-packed walls muffled the sound from the surface, a group of Kaleesh women and children huddled around a single dim lamp. The women held the children close, veils masking their fearful expressions. They listened to the skirmish above and shuddered.

“Are they going to find us?” asked a child in a hushed voice.

“Ancestors willing, no,” said one of the women.

“Our warriors will drive them off,” chimed in another, her anxious gaze fixed on the ceiling of the cellar, waiting for any indication that the invaders had entered their hut and unearthed the cellar trapdoor under the patterned rug. “They always do.”

A faint bellow of agony sent several of the children whimpering, and their aunts and mothers shushed them, gathering their small bodies into their laps, nuzzling foreheads to settle their fears with comforting kuu-lir.

One of the younger children squirmed and began to cry more intensely, despite her mother’s attempts to console her.

“Shh, Dari, shh. Please. It’s all right, but we must be quiet.”

“Keep it _down_ …”

“Dari, what’s wrong?”

“W-where’s Qymaen?” the little girl wept, stretching her hands out toward the space where her playmate should have been.

The women all turned in different directions and scanned the cellar. Qymaen was nowhere to be seen. They knew he was old enough that he needn’t be fetched and carried bodily down to the cellar with the younger children; he should have come on his own. They also knew his father was currently teaching him how to use a slugthrower, though Kishar had insisted, repeatedly and at length, that Qymaen was not yet ready to fight with the older warriors.

Dari’s mother’s eyes grew wide.

“Oh, no.”

Aboveground, flames erupted as the Huk set fire to the nearest plot of farmland to the village. Farming was difficult enough in the dry valley without their enemies undoing all of their hard work, and a collective cry of outrage and dismay went up from the warriors and villagers who could see the fire as it began to consume the entire crop. Atop the granary, flat on his back with his rifle clutched to his chest, Qymaen could practically feel the heat of the blaze.

 _It’s safe up here_ , he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut, as if the flames would disappear along with his vision. _Father told me what happened before. No more grass between the crop and the village wall. The fire won’t spread. It’s safe_.

But the fire was hardly the only danger, and his hands tightened with instinctive terror around his weapon when a rhythmic chittering thrummed through the night air, painfully loud. It was impossible to say how many Huk there were or how close they were to the granary; that was part of their typical strategy, it seemed, to create so much noise that their enemies had trouble counting their numbers or gauging their proximity. Qymaen forced his eyes open, if only to confirm that none had discovered his hiding place on the roof of the granary, and were not now looming over him with death in their bulbous, multifaceted eyes. Thanking the ancestors that he was as yet undiscovered, and offering them an apology for his unmasked face in the thick of battle, he rolled onto his stomach, fought to control his panicked breaths, and lined the scope of his rifle with his eye.

They were there in the streets below, hulking silhouettes given intermittent form and clarity during the pulses of blaster fire and the discharge of shock grenades. The Huk were tall, taller than the Kaleesh, insectoid monstrosities with leering mouths set in wedge-like heads and forelimbs that ended in barbed, serrated blades capable of slicing a warrior’s head from his shoulders. Not all of the Huk had these terrible cutting limbs; perhaps a third of them had arms that terminated in grasping fingers, granting them the dexterity to fire their blasters and pilot their starships.

They were called the _Yam’rii_ , it was said, by those who had lived to learn such a thing and pass the knowledge along. But here in the Ausez Steppes, they were the _Huk_ —soulless bugs—a vile, offworld pestilence that had overrun Kalee and left devastation and broken homes in their wake.

Qymaen saw them, saw that they had the upper hand. A Huk fought with Chieftain Xansis, his father’s cousin, a mountain of a man even alongside his towering opponent, both his swinging Lig sword and painted kakmusme gleaming in Qymaen’s scope. Another Huk hauled a villager who clutched a boneknife through the window of his hut, threw him to the ground and shot him through the head with a blaster before his victim or Qymaen could do more than flinch. Two others worked together to drag an electro net behind them, weighed down with unconscious captives—boys he recognized as not much older than himself, old enough to fight, but apparently young enough for the Huk to feel confident in capturing. This was why the Huk did not simply bombard villages with plasma from their starships, why they carried out their small, controlled, selective raids. They didn’t wish to simply kill and destroy all in their path. They wanted _Kaleesh_ , and they took care to weed out those they deemed easy for the taking.

He mumbled under his breath as he sought his targets, hardly aware he was doing so. “They can’t see me. They can’t see me. I can see them. All of them. One, two, three...six...seven…”

A Huk cornered a villager, disarming him. The villager pressed his back to a wall.

For how petrified he was, Qymaen should have been shaking. And yet, the terror never surfaced, never made it past the wall he had unconsciously erected in his mind. On one side of the dam churned his fears, sickening and steeped in hysteria; on the other lay a sea of serenity, where a single ripple could secure his full focus.

The Huk lifted its blaster. A ripple on still waters.

“Don’t breathe,” Qymaen whispered through a slow, steady exhalation, and, when the breath was gone, he squeezed the trigger.

The Huk’s eyes fell vacant as a high-velocity slug ripped through its head in a spray of green blood. It dropped its blaster and collapsed on the spot. The Kaleesh villager looked swiftly around for his savior, and, spotting no one, simply picked up the Huk’s weapon and took off down the street to find another raider.

One of the Huk lugging an electro net cried out and clapped a three-fingered hand over its wounded shoulder before almost immediately taking a slug to the head. Its companion stumbled, whipping out a blaster and seeking an enemy, before it, too, dropped from a headshot.

Meanwhile, Kishar swore to himself, wishing he had taken the time to find a vantage point and fight the Huk on his own terms. Instead, he found himself oscillating between giving chase and being chased, darting around on the streets and inevitably rounding corners to find himself face-to-face with yet another Huk, inasmuch as a Huk’s repulsive physiognomy could be called a face. With a bayonet affixed to his rifle, he held his own in close-quarters combat, though a few scythe-arms glanced off the protective surface of his mumuu kakmusme and rattled his skull. 

Fresh from a point-blank shot straight to the thorax of a Huk, Kishar rounded yet another corner feeling exultant. His satisfaction shattered in a gut-roiling instant when he spotted Xansis before him, in that moment staggering backward with a deep gash splitting leather and flesh across his chest.

Kishar raised his rifle, aiming at the face of the Huk who had struck down his cousin, and flinched when the glittering red eye centered in his scope erupted before he could pull the trigger. Startled, he cast a quick glance around, following the trajectory of the shot. A glint from the roof of the granary caught his notice, and he spared the unknown rifleman a nod before rushing to his fallen cousin’s side.

He knew a death blow when he saw it. Xansis’ tunic and leather armor were drenched in blood, and, as Kishar knelt and gathered him into his arms, he realized no new blood was pumping forth from the wound. Kishar bowed his head.

A series of sharp, rapid clicks supplanted the chittering noise that had underscored most of the battle unabated. The Kaleesh soon deciphered its meaning—the Huk were turning, retreating, fleeing. Electro nets and would-be slaves were left abandoned in the streets as they scurried on spindly legs to where their starship awaited them outside of Irikuum, on the opposite end of the burning farmland. As they sprinted past the outer wall and into the tall grasses, one of the Huk appeared to trip to the sound of an echoing clap of another rifle shot. 

A hooting cry of triumph resounded through the village as the Huk’s ship swooped across the valley and up into the star-scattered sky.

Soon, the villagers of Irikuum were all finding each other in the night, reuniting with those who survived, mourning those who were lost. Many worked together to ferry buckets from the well to the perimeter of the smoldering, destroyed farm to ensure the flames didn’t creep any closer to the village proper. While a warrior used a blade to cut captives free of a discarded electro net, Kishar sought out his son, growing increasingly frantic when he didn’t emerge with the women and children from their hiding spots.

Just as he steeled himself for the worst possible scenario—to check beneath the masks of bodies the Huk left behind—he spotted a small, skinny figure climbing down the ladder at the granary, rifle lashed safely to his back to give him full control of his descent. Even from this distance, he saw that Qymaen needed every hand he could spare as he wobbled and pitched on each rung. 

Qymaen, on the ground again and no less dizzy for it, leaned against a hut wall to collect himself and try to calm his breathing. The tranquility he’d summoned during the shootout had evaporated the moment it was all over, leaving him with every residual fear he’d managed to bury. He closed his eyes and tried to remember a prayer the Malga had taught him, a prayer for the peace of one’s soul, but it was futile to think at the moment. It felt like he was going to shake apart from the inside out.

Hands grabbed his shoulders and his eyes flew open with a gasp. Peering down at him was a familiar sight—his father’s kakmusme, a bonemask shaped from a mumuu’s skull and painted red with the Jai Clan’s sigil. Qymaen exhaled a breathy laugh, weak with relief.

Kishar squeezed his son’s shoulders. “You were supposed to stay below,” he said, stern but equally relieved.

“I’m sorry.” Qymaen barely got the words out. “I...I wanted to help.”

His father pulled him into a tight hug, then, which finally began to persuade the both of them to relax. The spool of tension in Kishar’s chest unwound as he breathed his son’s scent, and Qymaen, completely enveloped in warm arms and pressed up against the musk of old leather, began taking slower, deeper lungfuls of air. “How many did you fell?” Kishar asked at length.

“Seven,” came the muffled reply.

Kishar drew back. “Seven!”

Qymaen gauged his father’s reaction and, seeing as he didn’t appear _too_ upset about him venturing aboveground to fight, decided it was all right to boast a bit. “All in the head.”

“Well, I am _most_ impressed, little Sheelal,” Kishar couldn’t help but chuckle with pride, scrambling his son’s locked hair.

Qymaen almost smiled, squirming a little at the gesture, but his face fell as a memory came back to him. “I tried to help Chieftain Xansis. Was I too late?”

His father sobered in an instant. “My cousin has gone to join the ancestors,” he said, keeping his speech formal lest he dwell too deeply upon the loss. “He died well, in battle.”

Qymaen bowed his head. “What will Zaebar and his mother do? Should they stay with us? We have room.”

Kishar felt another slight swell of pride. His son, forever thinking of others, aggressively helpful. “They will probably live with Malga Shapra for now. She is his sister, after all.”

“I thought no one else could live in the Malga’s home?”

“He may take no wives. Family is fine.” Kishar returned his hand to Qymaen’s head, stroking gently. “Don’t worry. Zaebar will still be well cared for. I will also be sure to look after him.”

“But what about the chieftain? Every village needs a chieftain. Who—who’s going to be…?” A jaw-cracking yawn interrupted his train of thought and he almost slumped on the spot.

Kishar recognized the fatigue that often followed a battle rush; it was no wonder it struck Qymaen so severely, if his still-trembling hands and knees were any indication. “That’s a burden for tomorrow,” he told his son, slipping an arm around him for support. “For now, let’s get you home so you can rest.”

“I’m not tired,” Qymaen mumbled.

A fist of dismay clenched Kishar’s throat. Seven Huk dead by Qymaen’s hand, and yet here his son drooped under his arm, a boy who protested his bedtime like any other sleepy child who stayed up too late.

Just a child.

But it was too late to go back, to take back his slugthrower lessons, to roll back time to a life before the Huk arrived. Time marched on, bloody and inevitable.

“Even warriors need their sleep,” Kishar said, forcing the sadness from his voice, “and you’ve had a long night, little Sheelal.”


	2. Chapter 2

53 BBY

Year Nine of Yam’rii Occupation

Qymaen sat up with a strangled gasp, but the waking world brought him no respite. His frantic eyes sought the familiar shapes and shadows of his sleeping quarters, but it was too dark—darker than his room had ever been or could ever be—and panic set his heart racing.

_Had the Huk captured him?_

_Was he still dreaming?_

_Was he dead?_

But where his eyes failed, his other senses rallied. The smell of dew-damp grass, the shuffle of kuunsi hooves and the song of night insects reminded him why he was not in Irikuum, why his neck ached him from the strain of sleeping on the hard ground in a cramped tent.

Still, a shudder ran down the length of his spine.

_How long had it been since he’d had one of his dreams?_

Rolling over, he squinted through the blackness and found the lamp without too much difficulty. A warm glow soon filled the tent, illuminating both occupants. Qymaen prodded the lump of cloth and animal hide beside him. “Are you awake?” he whispered.

His father, cocooned in his bedroll, grumbled in response. “Now I am. You should be resting. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“I had a dream. You said I should tell you if I had any dreams.”

Kishar emerged from his bedroll, propping himself up on his elbows. Both he and Qymaen slept in their leathers, ready at a moment’s notice should they need to rouse earlier than anticipated. Kishar blinked himself alert; this was not the premature wake-up call he’d expected, but no less significant than the return of his kamen’s scouts. “Not just _any_ dreams,” he reminded his son. “Just the strange ones. Not the dreams where your teeth drop out when you talk to the pretty girl from the next village over.”

Qymaen frowned, unamused by his father’s teasing. “This was a strange dream.”

Kishar nodded, lifting a hand in a wave of apology and to encourage elaboration. “Tell me what happened.”

Qymaen took a moment to gather his thoughts. His hands wandered with restless energy as he spoke, picking at loose stitching on his tunic, running a thumb over the chin tusks that had finally broken skin a half-year earlier, fussing with the ends of his dangling locked hair. “It was about you. You were running. I know it was you, since you were wearing your kakmusme. It had our sigil and everything. You were running from—a really bright light. Couldn’t see if there was something inside or behind the light. Too bright. But it meant something _bad_. And you were running and running, and I kept shouting at you to turn _left_. You didn’t seem to hear me. The light almost caught up with you.” His fidgeting hands fell idle in his lap. “I think that’s when I woke up. I don’t know if you turned left or not, or...or if the light got you.”

“Hmm.” Kishar tilted his head. “You say you were yelling at me. Where were you during all of this? Were you running with me?”

Qymaen wetted his lips, trying to remember. “I...don’t know. I’m not sure.”

His father settled down in his bedroll with a sigh and a creak of leather. “Well, little Sheelal, if I find myself running from a bright light, I’ll be sure to turn left. Now, let’s try and get some more sleep—though our backs won’t thank us in the morning after a night on this _rock_. I could have sworn the ground wasn’t so hard when I chose this spot to pitch our tent.”

His blithe attitude was like a bonemask, designed to mitigate discomfort with levity. Qymaen could hear unease swimming beneath the surface, the same apprehension that he himself tried and failed to drown as he put out the lamp and lay down, willing the darkness to lull him to sleep. Pointless. He already knew sleep wouldn’t take him again, not for the rest of night, not after one of _those_ dreams. He stared up at the peaked ceiling of their tent and blinked a few times. The ghost of a green afterglow had burned itself under his eyelids—not from the lamp, but, improbably, from the blazing light he’d dreamt of.

A rustle from his right. His father was still awake, too, from the sound of it.

“Did I _really_ have a dream about the Huk just before they invaded?” He knew the answer. He simply hoped to hear the story from his father again. Something about lying in bed, reeling from what was as much a nightmare as a dream in its ambiguity, made him feel like the child he no longer was. At twelve years, having already seen his fair share of battles and hunts, he couldn’t cling to his youth anymore. And yet, neither was he full-grown— _of age_ , yes, but true maturity lay some years ahead of him. Right now, for his life, all he wanted was for his father to tell him a bedtime tale he’d heard a hundred times before.

The rustling stopped. “That’s what your mother told me,” Kishar said after a painful pause, voice constricting as it ever did when he spoke of his wife. “She was the one who went in to calm you down after you woke up. You were crying about giant sky-boats and weapons that shot bolts of flame and terrible monsters with arms like swords come to Kalee to take us away.” Kishar sighed. “When she came back to bed and described your dream to me, I dismissed it. I’d told you the story of your great-elder-mother and the Bitthævrians that night before you slept. I assumed it gave you nightmares.”

Qymaen closed his eyes, trying to summon the memory of that first dream from the depths of his subconscious. He only saw more phantom lights. “I wish I could remember it.”

“You earned your name that night.” Kishar smiled wistfully, unseen. “Shahulla _insisted_. Three years is awfully young to earn a name, but when the very next week we heard the news about the sack of Sheriga...and heard the description of the invaders and what they did to Kaleesh...well, there was no convincing her otherwise. Our little Sheelal. Still dreaming.”

Qymaen’s claws dug into the soft juleem-hide pouch that served as his pillow. His next question caught in his throat multiple times before he finished speaking it. “I...I didn’t have a... _dream_...before they took her away...did I?”

Kishar’s smile vanished. “None that you told us. Do you remember?”

“I remember that night. The raid. But...no. I don’t remember any dreams.”

A sudden, wretched thought: _If I’d had a dream, I could have saved her_.

Qymaen clutched his pillow tight and rolled over in his skins, putting his back to his father as if to hide his wet eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe they don’t really mean anything. The dreams. Just...just a lucky coincidence.”

Kishar lifted his head in consternation, ready to cite the Malga’s evaluation of Qymaen’s dreams as evidence to the contrary, but before he could open his mouth the tent began shaking under a pair of urgent hands from outside.

“Chieftain Immartu!” a voice barked. “Are you awake? Our scouts return with news.”

Father and son both scrambled from their bedrolls as swiftly as they could in the limited space. Kishar strapped on his kakmusme before ducking out of the tent, and Qymaen followed at his heels, not yet in possession of his own bonemask, but wearing a young warrior’s variation of a dulhlava wrapped around his lower face.

The encampment sprawled outward from their central tent, some twenty other tents filling the shallow valley, interspersed with torches and small campfires for light and warmth in the cool night air. Saddled kuunsi pawed at the grass where they stood tethered and waiting, and they lifted their heads at the commotion, putting up their short trunks to sniff for danger. A cluster of anxious warriors awaited Kishar as he rose to his full height and strode forward to meet them by the light of the nearest fire.

“What’s going on, then?” he demanded as his warriors parted to allow two winded scouts to stagger forward.

“Chieftain,” panted one scout. “We know the Huk send their slavers to raid villages at dawn—but their shuttle just left now! We watched it fly west.”

Kishar frowned behind his mask. “Hours ahead of schedule. I wonder why the change?”

“Who knows why the Huk do anything?” muttered a warrior.

“Could it be a trap?”

“How could they possibly know we were planning to free slaves from their colony on this day?”

Shaking his head, Kishar put his hands aloft for silence. “It is disconcerting, but this remains our best opportunity to strike. It is a smaller colony. With this raid, they’ve sent away a score of their fighters. We stand a _chance_.” His voice, deep and resonant, carried to the rest of the warriors in the encampment. “We are accelerating our plan. We leave in five minutes. Prepare to move out.”

Amid the ensuing flurry of activity, Qymaen stepped close to Kishar and tugged his sleeve. “Father?”

Kishar turned immediately, looking down. Qymaen had passed his first growth, but the next few years, he suspected, would see him sprout up to a height rivaling his own. He hoped the boy would fill out some, but Qymaen’s aptitude for long-range marksmanship meant he was unlikely to have reason to build up muscle strength or engage a Huk personally in a fight. _Much like myself_ , he wryly admitted, though he possessed _some_ versatility on the battlefield, and, despite his present skill, had not picked up slugthrowing with the same ease as his son. Qymaen, on the other hand, had all the makings of the greatest rifleman on the western continent.

_And still so young._

“Yes, little Sheelal?” he asked.

His face hidden by the patterned dulhlava, only Qymaen’s eyes reflected his grim determination. “I want to go into the Huk colony with you this time.”

Kishar drew Qymaen aside, away from the other warriors and their preparations. Bending at the waist, he held his son’s serious gaze. “Listen, Qymaen. You are a very skilled sniper. I need you outside the settlement, where you have distance on your side.”

“I’ll end up spending most of the time _watching_. I want to _help_.”

“Watching _is_ helping.” Kishar placed a hand on his son’s head. “It’s still dangerous for us to attack even these small colonies. If you see anyone we cannot, you will shoot them right in the head, like you always do, won’t you?

“Yes…”

Qymaen radiated disappointment, the emotion so powerful Kishar fancied he could smell it in his kuu-lir. Kishar sighed and bowed his head a minute. When he at last raised his face, Qymaen could see through the bonemask’s eye sockets his father’s cheekbones lift in a smile. “Look,” said Kishar, “after we return to Irikuum, once we have finished this mission—how about we have Zaebar help me teach you how to fight with Lig swords?”

Qymaen lit up like a beacon. “Yes!”

Kishar chuckled. “Good. Now, fetch your rifle. We must leave soon.”

The warriors of Irikuum numbered thirty or so men, forming a rather modest kamen, but large enough for the purpose of their mission. Their kuunsi outnumbered them, more than a dozen excess mounts in anticipation of the slaves they hoped to free and spirit away in the predawn darkness. Qymaen, armed with his slugthrower, ducking his way through the larger, broader warriors who had pledged themselves to his father, found his own animal, a young blue dun female whose petite size was better suited to his own wanting stature. She greeted his approach with a snort, and proceeded to twist her long neck and snuffle at his shoulder with her trunk as he quickly painted the Jai Clan sigil on her hindquarters with white clay and tumu-shell pigment.

“We’ll make the ancestors proud today, won’t we, Imsa?” he whispered, applying a final streak down the front of her muzzle before passing the pigment bowl to another warrior. He wiped his paint-smeared hand on his tunic and added, “Them _and_ Father.”

Soon, they all galloped out across the steppes, heading in the direction of the Huk colony. The sky was still swallowed in darkness by the time Kishar drew his warriors to a halt at the top of a slight ridge a kilometer or so out from the colony. The colony itself was not well lit at this hour, dim and dormant, a fortified settlement of duracrete and duranium steel, plasma and circuitry, powered by generators the likes of which the Kaleesh have never dreamed of. Kalee as a whole understood little of the Huk’s technology, but Kishar had led enough raids against these smaller colonies to know of the usual structure and security measures of their settlements: a tall outer wall protected the colony as a whole, a smaller inner wall contained and separated both military and residential districts, and between the walls waited a ring of evenly positioned guard towers armed with blaster turrets.

He turned to address his kamen. “Snipers, set up here. The rest of you, with me. We will make this swift, too swift for them to have time to man their turrets. In and out, hit hard—kill as many Huk as you can—save as many of our people as possible.” Kishar squeezed his heels, goading his mount into action. “May the ancestors protect us!”

A storm of hooves descended the hill at a gallop, the majority of the kamen falling into line behind the Chieftain of Irikuum, for the moment stifling their war cries to delay the enemy’s notice of their approach. Qymaen and a handful of fellow snipers dismounted and arranged themselves along the top of the ridge, some setting up bipods with which to support their slugthrowers, others chewing mouthfuls of shredded zigmash to relax their muscles and aim their weapons freehanded. Qymaen didn’t quite have the strength to support his rifle without a bipod, but he felt someday he would be able to do so, as well as take steady shots without the aid of zigmash. For now, he clamped the bipod into place, stretched out on his belly and peered through the scope. He followed the path of the mounted kamen as they approached the outer wall of the colony. They were too far for him to hear much of anything, but he watched as the kamen slowed and his father waved an arm in a swooping gesture, the invisible trajectory of his arc echoed moments later by a pair of warriors drawing their kuunsi to the front of the unit and hurling prized chemical grenades at the wall. He flinched at the flash that accompanied their impact and immediate release of the gas the Kaleesh called im-uzra, its offworld name lost in multi-generational translation. Name, in this case, was far less important than function—the gas dissolved metal in a matter of moments, and the combined explosion of two grenades created a cloud large enough to melt an improvised doorway in the durasteel wall for the kamen to pass through.

Qymaen’s perch was such that he could see down into the colony as his father’s kamen began terrorizing the residential district. As planned, their warriors met little resistance. With the Huk’s raiding party away, and directing their attention away from the military sector, the warriors easily forced their way into homes to extract Kaleesh slaves and punish their captors. Few Huk blasters were fired in the streets, but the report of slugthrowers echoed back to the sniper’s ridge, and through his scope he saw Lig swords swing and shoni spears fly from kuunsi-back.

He paused for a break, having long since learned to rest his eyes periodically lest he fatigue them, focusing first on the grass under his elbows and then on the opposite horizon line.

Qymaen blinked. Swiveled his rifle, pointing it away from the colony, to the west. Squinted through the scope.

A distant Huk shuttle sped across the sky, heading for the colony.

His breath hitched. “ _Íb-ku huul_ ,” he swore.

“Qymaen! What are you doing?” called one of the other snipers in alarm when he spotted the chieftain’s son springing to his feet, strapping his Outland to his back and making a dash for his kuunsi.

Qymaen landed on Imsa and began urging her down the hill. “The shuttle!” he called frantically over his shoulder. “They’re coming back! I have to warn the kamen!”

“Wait—!”

Down in the colony, Kishar stepped over the butchered remains of a Huk as he gently led a shivering, rawboned Kaleesh woman out the front door of the residence. For all the danger it posed to the people of Irikuum, he’d found little regret in his decision to spend the past few years infiltrating Huk colonies, stealing supplies and freeing slaves, and in moments like these, holding the gaze of a grateful woman whose tusks had been filed flat and whose clipped ear would forever bear the mark of past ownership, he knew the danger was well worth it. He led her to the nearest available kuunsi and supported her as she climbed onto the beast, then turned to hail another warrior to lead her away onto a quieter street.

Instead, his arm flew up to shield his eyes as a brilliant light flared, illuminating the street he stood on as if in daylight.

Spaced out at regular intervals, stationed atop several buildings, powerful spotlights swung around and aimed their beams in concert down at the bulk of the surprised kamen below. Kuunsi reared in agitation, throwing a handful of riders before they could get control of their animals. Kishar mounted his animal and began calling out for his warriors, to rally the kamen, to signal retreat, but his voice drowned in the terrible roar of an ion engine—belonging to the Huk shuttle that descended into view a moment later, hovering a dozen meters in the air, occupying the space between the way the kamen rode in and where they currently stood frozen.

Qymaen pushed his kuunsi to her limit. Too late to beat the shuttle to the colony—foolishness to think it was ever a possibility.

Kishar’s eyes showed white around gold, pupils dilating in a flood of fear despite the blinding light.

The shuttle opened fire.

Laser cannons erupted and chewed through the mass of Kaleesh and kuunsi below, warriors and slaves alike, leaving scorched craters of black dirt and sizzling flesh in their wake. Huk began to emerge from hidden points throughout the residential district, having bided their time until the arrival of the shuttle, armed with blasters and their own natural weapons, wading into the mess to pick off survivors and stragglers. All attention focused inward, allowing a lone rider to penetrate the outer wall unscathed and unnoticed.

Qymaen wasn’t the one exerting himself in his desperate sprint for the interior of the Huk colony, but his every breath ripped at his chest as he rode his kuunsi toward the pulsing plasma bolts and the sound of anguished screaming. A quick jerk of the reins skirted Imsa down a side street, avoiding a direct approach down the main corridor, and soon he emerged on the fringes of the massacre. The stink of burning bodies slammed his nostrils through his dulhlava and he tried not to gag, dodging his kuunsi around charred warriors whose corpses had been flung from the epicenter of the shuttle’s cannon fire. He plunged his mount closer to that epicenter now, taking care to avoid the deadly shafts of light from the spotlights above, praying a stray blaster bolt would not hit him or Imsa. A Huk straightened to its full height, having finished cutting the throat of a downed warrior, and turned wide red eyes to see Qymaen bearing down on it. Both of its blood-soaked cutting arms flew up in defense as Qymaen—already relaxing and exhaling as if he’d fallen into a trance—slid his rifle off his back in a fluid motion and shot the Huk through the head without even putting the scope to his eye.

He rode into the thick of the chaos. Injured kuunsi ran in panicked circles, and the remaining members of the kamen did not fare much better. With several Huk now in their midst, slashing with their scythe-arms and firing into the crowd, at least the shuttle had ceased its bombardment of the street, allowing Qymaen to slow his kuunsi and scan the staggering, brawling shadows before him for a familiar shape.

Kishar couldn’t understand why he was unable to move, at first. A crushing heaviness pinned him to the dirt, robbing him of feeling from the waist down, but, from what he could sense through a swell of dizziness and nausea, this was because all feeling had concentrated itself in his abdomen in the form of tremendous pressure and pain. He tried to touch his stomach and fresh agony shot up his arms like a lightning strike, his panicked gasp the answering crack of thunder. Panting and trying not to jostle his broken body, he slowly began to take in his surroundings.

His kuunsi, dead on top of him. The bones of his wrists, snapped from his fall. The suffocating weight on his torso, the promise of his own mortality. A Huk standing over him, aiming its blaster.

Kishar ignored the spill of blackness at the edge of his vision and glared up at the Huk, baring his teeth in defiance.

Then he gasped again, this time in shock, as a slight figure hurled itself off the back of a nearby kuunsi and smashed into the Huk, bowling both it and its small attacker to the ground in a tangle of limbs. The surprise of the assault prevented the Huk from defending itself with any efficacy, and within moments clawed fingers prized the Huk’s blaster from its hand, pressed the muzzle of the weapon to its head and pulled the trigger.

Kishar wondered if his savior wasn’t a product of his dying mind, but he tried speaking to the apparition anyway. His words barely held the energy to pass his lips. “Qymaen? What are you...what…”

Qymaen rolled off the dead Huk, tossing the blaster aside to free his hands. He clambered over to his father and pressed his palms against the deadweight of the collapsed kuunsi, pushing with all his might, arms shaking with the effort. “Come on,” he babbled as he strained to move the dead beast, to no avail. “I’m getting you out of here. I’m going to—let’s get this thing off of you—come on. We have to go _now_.”

A hand wrapped around his wrist. There was no strength in the grip, but urgency stirred in Kishar’s voice. “No. _No_ , you must go. Leave. It’s too late.”

Too many emotions coursed through Qymaen’s heart for him to settle on any of them. Fury, terror, despair and heart-drumming hysteria pulled him in every direction when what he really needed was to be _solid_ , an anchor for his father in this world, a barrier through which the ancestors could not reach and snatch him away from him. “It’s not too late,” he snapped, himself breathless from his attempt to budge the kuunsi. “Come on…!”

“Don’t die here with me, little Sheelal. Please.”

Qymaen’s eyes burned. “Father.”

“Go. Run…”

The hand on his wrist slid, fingers lax, then fell limp. Qymaen abandoned the kuunsi and turned to his father, grabbing his shoulders, shaking him.

“ _Father_ ,” he said again. He sat there on his knees another moment, trying to process what he had just seen, what he had _felt_ happen under his own hands, but rational thought took flight, a scattering flock of frightened birds abandoning him frozen on the ground, unable to do more than stare blankly at his father’s kakmusme.

Pain stabbed his shoulder and reality came crashing down. Qymaen fell back and clapped a hand to singed cloth and skin, hissing through his teeth. A swift, dizzy inspection confirmed the blaster bolt had only grazed his arm, splitting his leathers and burning the surface of his scaly flesh. He couldn’t stay here any longer, lest another blaster bolt, a scythe-arm or one of the swinging spotlights find him. But he hesitated. He crawled to his father, murmured a brief, dazed prayer, then gripped his father’s bonemask in his hands and tugged it free.

Normally, if a warrior fell in battle before his eldest son had fashioned his own kakmusme, his bonemask passed on to that child during the funerary rites and entombment. There was no time for that now. Qymaen yanked the dulhlava away from his mouth and fastened his father’s kakmusme— _his_ kakmusme—to his face, and though it was too big, he tightened the straps until it held firm against his forehead. Thus clad, he staggered to his feet, found his kuunsi nervously pacing a short distance away, and mounted her.

Panic still ruled the remains of the kamen, and Qymaen realized that, with his father gone, no one had stepped up to take the reins, as it were. So he waved his uninjured arm over his head and started shouting. “Warriors—survivors—follow me!” He repeated this once, twice, giving them time to find their feet and their kuunsi, then set Imsa galloping down the side street he’d taken before.

It was a paltry group of maybe a half-dozen, all of them bearing injuries from blaster burns to broken bones, but they moved together, following Qymaen’s lead. He traced his roundabout path in reverse, keeping them out of the main corridor and beyond the hunting searchlights as long as possible, but he knew the route would eventually overlap with the kamen’s original ingress to the colony. He’d been lucky, earlier, lucky, alone and unseen. Now, when the tiny kamen burst from their cover and coursed out into the stretch of open space between the inner and outer walls, the Huk were waiting for them.

The blinding spotlights pivoted, casting the riders’ shadows long on the ground before them. The mounted laser turrets atop their guard towers followed suit, taking aim. The shuttle loomed behind them, lifting into the sky above the colony.

It seemed the ancestors held their breath.

 _Then_ Qymaen realized.

“LEFT!” he screamed, the word tearing his throat raw. “Left, now!”

Laser cannon fire exploded in the spot the kamen occupied mere moments earlier as they all dodged their kuunsi to the left. Qymaen felt the heat of it at his back, but focused on the wall before him, aiming for a secondary entrance not a single Kaleesh had noticed until then. Unlit as it was, there would have been no reason for the kamen to see it, had it not been for their split-second maneuver, and Qymaen was as astonished as any of them as they galloped through the opening and out onto the steppes, outside the range of the lights and turrets.

The Huk shuttle hovered, wavering for a moment, as if a sentient predator considering whether its prey was worth the pursuit. At length, it returned to an easier quarry, tilting toward the residential street and picking off the doomed Kaleesh who had failed to escape.

—

Miles away and some time later, Zaebar sighed.

He would never admit it to the elder watchmen who stood silent vigil alongside him at Irikuum’s gate, but he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. The night watch was not an arduous test of stamina by any means; it shamed him to no end to find himself wearied by the simple task of standing in one spot, armed with an old pair of macrobinoculars, scanning the steppes.

He tried to assure himself he’d been awake all hours of the night. Who wouldn’t be exhausted after that? Don’t think about the kamen, riding through the night, fighting the Huk...while he slumped with his elbows propped on the waist-high wall that encircled their village, bored to weariness, fighting to stay awake.

His heavy eyelids drooped again, and Zaebar jolted alert, cursing under his breath. He blinked, then adjusted his binoculars.

“Riders,” he gasped, jabbing a claw toward the distant dust cloud.

The other watchmen lifted their rifles.

“Wait,” said one, peering through his scope. “Those are our warriors. See?”

“Our kamen is returning already?” The other watchman looked up. A faint glow crept over the mountains, draining darkness from the sky and ushering grey dawn in its place. “They were supposed to be at the Huk colony by now.”

Zaebar swallowed, his heart sinking. “That...that doesn’t look like enough men to be our kamen.”

“Go wake your uncle, Zaebar.”

Soon, a throng of babbling, agitated villagers welcomed the remainder of the kamen on their exhausted mounts, having roused during the commotion. Amid the confusion, Malga Shapra strode forward to meet the warriors, a middle-aged Kaleesh man who wore embroidered vestments and a headdress fashioned from the horned skull of a pakozri, a tall, wooden staff carved with holy symbols clenched in hand. The Malga’s sister, Zaebar’s mother, trailed behind him, holding her son by the shoulder.

“Where is Chieftain Immartu?” asked Malga Shapra of the warriors.

Qymaen dismounted and stepped forward. He dropped to his knees so abruptly the onlookers couldn’t be sure if he had stumbled or if he deliberately knelt before the Malga. Either way, his shoulders heaved as he ducked his head, and when he spoke, misery clutched his voice. “My...Chieftain Immartu has gone to join the ancestors. A-as did most of our warriors.” His breath quickened, ragged. “It was—it was a trap, we—I couldn’t—I wasn’t able to…”

With deep sorrow and sympathy, Malga Shapra reached out and laid his palm on Qymaen’s bowed head. “Irikuum will mourn the fallen together, young one,” he said softly. He turned and motioned to his sister. “Nulahu, I think you should take Qymaen home. Tend to his burn. He will stay with us for now.” He then addressed the crowd at large, commanding their attention despite his mild voice and bearing. Villagers leaned in, ears pivoting, eyes locking with earnest on the holy man. “At the evening blessing, I will speak the funerary rites for our warriors who passed on. Families, bring a life token that we may bury in place of flesh. I will see you all tonight. Ancestors’ blessings.”

While the Malga spoke, Nulahu moved up to help Qymaen to his feet, murmuring comforting words that he scarcely heard over his own pulse. He tried to hold his head high, to summon strength, but the despair of the day finally caught up with him, having dogged and snapped at his heels all the way from the colony. His knees trembled, he crumpled in Nulahu’s arms, and he wept.

Strength could come tomorrow. 

Sunlight streaked the sky over the village, washing the valley pink with warmth. The terrible night ended as the dawn of a new era glimmered, even if the people of Irikuum did not yet realize it.

A burden for tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes Part One of Sahuldeem, which essentially acts as a prologue for the rest of the story. I will start posting the significantly longer Part Two (Sheelal) next week! Thanks for reading!


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